Edmund Burke

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
– Edmund Burke

Our patience will achieve more than our force.
– Edmund Burke

Good order is the foundation of all things.
– Edmund Burke

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
– Edmund Burke

Never, no, never did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another.
– Edmund Burke

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
– Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
– Edmund Burke

Men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
– Edmund Burke

Never despair. But if you do, work on in despair.
– Edmund Burke

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true
remedy for superstition.
– Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are
poor indeed.
– Edmund Burke

People never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
– Edmund Burke

There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.
– Edmund Burke

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our
helper.
– Edmund Burke

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles,
and designs.
– Edmund Burke

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
– Edmund Burke

All government, indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent
act, is founded on compromise and barter.
– Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
– Edmund Burke

When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied
sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
– Edmund Burke

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
– Edmund Burke

There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator,
the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature, and of nations.
– Edmund Burke

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
– Edmund Burke

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without
deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts
right.
– Edmund Burke

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
– Edmund Burke

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils;
for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
– Edmund Burke

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter
connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
– Edmund Burke

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
– Edmund Burke

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on
the public mind.
– Edmund Burke

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
– Edmund Burke

Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.
– Edmund Burke

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by
the laughter of the gods.
– Edmund Burke

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is
grand.
– Edmund Burke

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
– Edmund Burke

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their
talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers
instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
– Edmund Burke

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
– Edmund Burke

In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful
job, but as to a holy function.
– Edmund Burke

Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and
then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine
us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.
– Edmund Burke

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will
be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be
dangerous.
– Edmund Burke

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
– Edmund Burke

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon
his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.
– Edmund Burke

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements: Success.
– Edmund Burke

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to
presume ability.
– Edmund Burke

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
– Edmund Burke

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
– Edmund Burke

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are
under the influence of imagination.
– Edmund Burke

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
– Edmund Burke

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
– Edmund Burke

When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is
unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
– Edmund Burke

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
– Edmund Burke

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real
misfortunes and pains of others.
– Edmund Burke

Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
– Edmund Burke

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep
them both: It is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
– Edmund Burke

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
– Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
– Edmund Burke

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.
– Edmund Burke

Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead
and those who are yet to be born.
– Edmund Burke

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
– Edmund Burke

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
– Edmund Burke

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.
– Edmund Burke

It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most
anxious for its welfare.
– Edmund Burke

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not
remove the necessity of subduing again: And a nation is not governed, which is perpetually
to be conquered.
– Edmund Burke

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with
an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to
the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
– Edmund Burke

It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it
comes into the currency of a proverb – to innovate is not to reform.
– Edmund Burke

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
– Edmund Burke

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
– Edmund Burke

No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to
allow such a principle in its policy.
– Edmund Burke

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times,
and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations – wine, beer,
opium, brandy, or tobacco.
– Edmund Burke

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
– Edmund Burke

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude
that to be good from whence good is derived.
– Edmund Burke

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
– Edmund Burke

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I
ought to do.
– Edmund Burke

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
– Edmund Burke

All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally
corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
– Edmund Burke

The greater the power the more dangerous the abuse.
– Edmund Burke

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
– Edmund Burke

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
– Edmund Burke

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
– Edmund Burke

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right
that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.
– Edmund Burke

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this
great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole
people.
– Edmund Burke

Well it is known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
– Edmund Burke

The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of
the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
– Edmund Burke

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
– Edmund Burke

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it,
under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
– Edmund Burke

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to
accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.
– Edmund Burke

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.
– Edmund Burke

A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at
least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?
– Edmund Burke

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
– Edmund Burke

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.
– Edmund Burke

Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he
contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.
– Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
– Edmund Burke

And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite
the hand that fed them.
– Edmund Burke